A "bull in a china shop" calls up a picture of tremendous uproar and devastation. The ancient Greeks substituted "An ass peeping." Menander, three hundred years before the Christian era, refers to it, as do Lucian and others. The story upon which it is founded is, that an ass, being driven along the road, put its head into the shop of a potter. This potter was a great lover of birds, and had many of them in his shop, and the sudden appearance of the ass's great head frightened them and led to a big smashing up of the crockery. The moral may be found in another ancient saying--"A mad beast must have a sober driver." The Latin "Bovem in lingua habet"--"He has an ox on his tongue"--is a hint that the man has been bribed to silence or false speech, an ox being a favourite device on the coins. Another saying of like significance is that, "The man has a bone in his mouth." A valuable lesson to the discontented, a warning that necessary troubles must be endured, that duties may not be shirked, is this--"To what place can the ox go where he will not plough?" That the malicious cannot do all the harm they would is happily suggested in the adage, "Curst cows have curt horns." This proverb is centuries old, and is merely a translation from an ancient Latin[175:A] original--if indeed it be safe to suggest any date when this proverb sprung into birth--for it is quite possible that Noah quoted it as a bit of the good old wisdom of his forefathers. It is scarcely necessary to remind our readers of, and much less to expound for their benefit, so familiar a saying as, "A regular John Bull."